Look, no hands!

I spent 3 hours driving yesterday. It was the usual no school, kids taxi service. 3 kids, 2 tennis lessons, 1 group clinic and 2 tutoring sessions.

I may have been in the driver’s seat but I wasn’t “driving”. My hands weren’t on the steering wheel. My feet weren’t on the pedals. I spent only 4 minutes of the 3 hours yesterday actually driving. The car did the rest on its own.

The only time I took control was when we came across someone was riding a two wheeled electric bicycle at 20 mph wearing tinted ski goggles in the middle of the lane during a snow storm and the road had not been plowed in about 45 minutes. The street is normally 35 mph. It was a level 8 or 9 out of 10 dangerous for them even before you factor in the cars. It was a level 10 out of 10 stupid.

Over the last 2 weeks, I have driven about 1,000 miles. The car drove itself on its own for 30 of the 33 hours. City streets. Snow plows. Highways. A coyote running across the street about 50 feet in front of the car at 40 mph on snow packed roads. Amazon trucks parked in the street delivering packages. Utility trucks making repairs. Postal trucks delivering mail. Garbage trucks. Police cars. Ambulances. School buses. School zones. Day time. Night time. Parking lots. School drop offs. The full gamut of scenarios.

Last week, I had the car drive while nearly 8 inches of snow fell in two hours. The conditions were borderline uncomfortable for a human to drive but the car did great. The various villages I drove through and the interstate had chosen to not plow the roads because it was just falling too quickly and they wanted to discourage people from driving. The car drove 90% of the time. The only time I took control was on a 4 mile 9% down hill grade that was effectively a bob sled track. I was actually the last car down before the police closed the road. And yet the car did not just good but great.

Sometimes it makes little mistakes. There is the occasional phantom breaking. Or not driving the speed I want. Or being a bit overly cautious. But all completely fine. Sometimes I am nervous enough that I do drive for 1-2 minutes. Sometimes, I simply forget that it can drive.

When I arrived in Cleveland, I was already a heavy user of self driving. The self driving revolution began in California. But when I first got here, the car didn’t understand some unique Cleveland situations like roundabouts and the particular way our express and local freeway lanes work. So you had to help it in every time one of these situations occurred.

But over the last 16 months, every month or two you wake up to your car having downloaded a new version overnight. You let the car drive that next day but you pay attention. One of the updates caused it to be confused by swirling piles of leaves. It was unsure whether you could drive through them or whether it could hurt them so there was some phantom braking.

6 years ago self driving cars wasn’t even a thing. Like at all. My first car to have self driving was a 2020 Tesla Model 3. That version of self-driving would only work on the freeway. If you entered your destination in the navigation software it would change lanes, switch highways and navigate to the off ramp when it would with a blaring siren tell you to take the wheel. It also had a pretty persistent nag about keeping your hands on the steering wheel. This feature cost a whopping $5,000 and seems barely useful compared to what it is today.

Now 6 years later, it drives cities and highways equally well. Regardless of whether I’m driving by myself or not, driving requires far less attention. It’s like a meeting. Sometimes you pay attention and sometimes you zone out. I can write in a notebook. Sometimes I send texts. You can read texts.

If someone is in the car, I now can enjoy the conversations more. I can make eye contact and give them my full attention. I can look for their non-verbal signals with much greater ease.

And it is far safer in my experience than me driving. Its level of attention and reaction time can’t be matched by humans. I hit a baby deer about 12 months ago that came out of nowhere at dusk. Although the deer slid about 150 feet down the road, the slope of the hood on the electric vehicle caused no visible injury and it was up in a couple minutes. The coyote the car avoided yesterday was the same situation only it handled it with ease.

There are still big things coming. You can’t sleep yet but that will come. It is neither legal nor would I put a kid in the car and have the car drive them to school or somewhere without me. The days of having to do an incredible amount of planning that 3 kids can do what they want AND have a logistically feasible schedule will be over. I will still want to ride with them when I can because car time is some of the best conversations but I won’t have to.

I would put this on the same level as discovering Amazon could deliver stuff to you rather than going to a store or having a smart phone. It’s completely transformative.

I can’t recommend enough you try it.